Research can be defined as a quest for knowledge, or as some systematic investigation to establish novel facts or concepts, oftentimes through utilization of a scientific method. Generally, research is undertaken in connection with discovering, interpreting, and developing methods and systems pertaining to the advancement of human knowledge on a wide variety of subject matters. Typically, advancements made in a particular field are based at least in part upon previous advances made in the same field or a related field. Accordingly, a researcher in connection with discovering, interpreting and/or developing a new method or system oftentimes turns to existing research papers written by other authors.
From the above, it can be ascertained that a scientific researcher spends a significant amount of time reviewing and processing research documents written by others when developing an advancement in a particular field. If the researcher locates a research document that is germane to an area of interest of the researcher, the researcher will review such document and may also desirably locate other research documents that are in some way related to that research document. An existing mechanism for locating related research documents is to analyze the bibliography of a currently reviewed research document and read references cited by that research document. This approach, however, has the deficiency that the researcher is reading documents that were written prior to the research document that the researcher found to be of interest. Thus, through this approach, the researcher may not locate a research document that describes more recent advances in the field of interest to the researcher.
Some research document searching services provide tools that allow a researcher to search for documents that have cited to a particular document of interest. This approach allows the researcher to quickly locate more recently published research documents that cited the research document of interest. For research documents that have been cited to by numerous other research documents, however, a significant amount of time may be required for the researcher to analyze all research documents that cite to the research document of interest.
Accordingly, systems that facilitate searching for research documents have been designed to include tools that allow research documents to be located by counting co-citations with respect to pairs of research documents. In other words, a first research document can be inferred to be highly related to a second research document if the first and second research document are often co-cited (both cited in other research documents). Using a system that supports locating research documents through counting co-citations, the researcher can identify a first research document that is of interest to the researcher to the system. Thereafter, the user can indicate that she wishes to be provided with co-citation information. A conventional research document search and analysis system can provide the user, responsive to receiving such request, a list of other research documents that are commonly co-cited with the previously identified research document. Accordingly, the researcher can infer that research documents in the list of co-cited research documents are in some way related to the identified research document. Oftentimes, however, a research document will include numerous advances in a particular field and may be cited to by other research documents for entirely different reasons. Therefore, the reviewer of this co-citation information has no context as to why the research documents were co-cited with the research document of interest.